The fans of RasenballSport Leipzig are not exactly known for their passion. The stadium rarely resembles a cauldron. But even the Leipzig fans had had enough of their team’s embarrassing performance against Shakhtar Donetsk. “We want to see you fight,” they demanded ten minutes before the final whistle.
The listless team did not meet the demand, they even conceded a goal in the final phase and lost the opening match of the Champions League against Donetsk 1:4. After the 4-0 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga, it was the next undisputed performance by Domenico Tedesco’s team.
The question is: How long will Tedesco be the coach of RasenballSport? Even before the game, what club boss Oliver Mintzlaff said shortly before kick-off at DAZN didn’t sound like total support for Tedesco: “The coach can’t help it if there’s no willingness to run at all and there’s a total lack of willingness to fight. I expect a reaction.”
She didn’t come. Leipzig also delivered a bloodless performance against Donetsk. The team ran but showed no determination and hardly created any scoring chances, especially in the second half.
“It’s difficult to find the right words. The course of the game reflects what we have had to experience in the past few weeks. The boys wanted,” said Tedesco at DAZN. He actually had a really good feeling in the second half: “I don’t think about my position at all. Tomorrow we’ll look ahead again and focus on the Dortmund game.”
I make a huge mistake before 0:1. The second goal, a deflected shot, breaks our necks. We don’t want to sugarcoat anything,” said Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulasci. The team is going through a phase in which many things are going against it: “The start of the season is very bad. The coach cannot do anything for the goals conceded. We are grown people on the pitch and we make mistakes.”
Leipzig midfielder Xaver Schlager offers a very idiosyncratic analysis of the game: “They don’t have a shot on goal and are 1-0 up. I have no explanation for this. We played well forward. I can remember the last few years when Real Madrid also lost against Donetsk. It’s hard for me to say they deserved to win.”